Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Read through the ship balancing dev blog the other day and was looking at the picture of the ships and where they were laid out by size.

http://cdn1.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/64722/1/Odysseybalancing.bmp

Then it dawned on me, I have been wanting a capital sized mining ship that could actually mine for a long time now. I like all the changes that have been made to the mining ships and now to mining in Null sec, but I still think that mining for 1 char is still highly underpowered. So anyway, what I noticed was that there was a possibility of symmetrical look to the ship balancing page linked above by adding a mining battleship.

Couple ideas on this front, It would be time intensive for design 3 ships like exhumers and mining barges so I would suggest that you give players what they have been wanting (to an extent) and kill two birds with one stone. I think it would be a perfect place for a tech 3 battleship mining ship. That would give you frig, cruiser, battleship, spacing them out skipping destroyer and BC. Give it the options to fit subsystems to do extra mining, cargo, tank, or whatever. Could have different subsystems for ice, gas, and ore so that you could have 1 ship for mining instead of 3 separate fitted ships for 3 types of mining.

Now to comment on the biggest issue that people are going to have with this. High sec mining with them. My thoughts to get around this to an extent is to have lore behind the ship. The main factions in eve have been petitioned by the environmentalist freaks of the universe and have convinced them to make production of these ships in stations held by their respective governments due to they would cause rapid depletion of asteroid belts. This would require that they be built in Null sec. Make the volume of the ship too big to fit into a capital ship bay so that they could not be jumped. This would make them harder to get into high sec making them less abundant and more expensive due to logistics of getting them to high sec.

My original thoughts were focused on Capital mining ships becuase that would require them to jump and would bar them from entering highsec. This might be a good alternative though due to the capital mining ship idea being hated by Soundwave. Speaking of which I do not agree or understand with your dislike of the idea Soundwave. No where else in eve are you limited to cruiser sized hulls just because it would do too much mining (damage) or whatever. Bigger targets means bigger kills and more losses. I wouldnt mind seeing some capital sized mining ships on kill mails. I doubt I would be one of them but never know. I just want to see a miner with 4-6 strip miners on it

I see some common misconceptions in your thread (this is not hate, or negative feedback, just some information).

1) There are BS-sized mining ships (e.g. The Rokh) with 8x turret slots to fill out with miner ll's, the yield is just lower then a barge

2) Mining barges are not, in principle, cruiser-sized hulls. With the rebalance of mining barges the idea was that, in terms of ehp, the skiff would be closer to BS, the Mackinaw BC, and the Hulk Cruiser, (I am quoting CCP) with the yield inversely proportional to HP.

Now for the negative feedback

I personally have an issue with the idea of mining capital ships in principle because mining is SUPPOSED to be underpowered as a solo profession. As the general idea of EVE isk making states: the greater the risk and the greater the player interaction the greater the rewards. Barring suicide ganking, the risk to a barge in high sec is minimal. And player interaction in terms of isk-making in a barge is as minimal as things get. Therefore mining is supposed to be an underpowered profession by nature.

A capital mining barge, especially in high sec, would DRASTICALLY reduce the risk by suicide ganking (due to the enormous ehp of capital ships) and similarly reduce player interaction (larger cargo bay means less trips to the station) while INCREASING the amount of reward. This goes against the general rule of EVE isk making and is therefore a bad idea, imo.

T3 mining ships aren't bad by nature, as they're supposed to be BROAD and not SPECIALIZED, e.g. a T3 barge would have lower yield in exchange for, let's say, better tank, inty nullifier, etc. This could mean more 0.0 mining, but if they were given a T2 cloak it'd probably be OP. But not being able to cloak while a mining laser is active, increase mining laser cycle time 100%, ultra-slow align time when using a mining laser, short range.....could work in that sense in protecting them from gate camps but making them vulnerable in belts.

I'll look for a discussion thread of T3 barges. Lower yield at higher cost for protection against gatecamps sounds awesome.

As for have I ever mined? I started out EVE mining. I've got Hulk + T2 strip T2 crystals and all that junk. Interaction is basically zero, but I said minimal to avoid the "well, if you're smart you're actively watching out for being ganked" or some nonsense.

Well I agree that either of the ideas would not be great if allowed in high sec. Which is why the capital version of the idea works better because if you make it big enough that it can not go through gates like the Rorqual then it can not go into high sec because you can not light a cyno in high sec.

As for the tech 3 idea the only reason I brought that up was because there is a obvious slot for one in the ship layout they presented.

Yes I know that the curiser sized hulls have different levels of hull strength. I personally do not really care of tank because I mine in Null sec because high sec mining is worthless isk / hour. I just want something that can fit more than 3 STRIP MINERS not normal mining lazors to produce more yield.



In response to mining should be less profitable than other stuff because of risk..... I can go out in duel carriers running two seprate sites in Null sec with a third char coming in along behind it with a salvager on duel screens and make 10x as much than mining with 3 charectors. Both instances of which I am sitting in a system with no reds for 4+ jumps away and no real threat of getting blown up. So why is it that miners can not have something with comparable isk / hour value per account?

I'm not convinced about that. If no rats are killed no isk is produced. If one rat is killed then that bounty is paid. If two rats are killed, twice the bounty is paid and that goes all the way up. Yesterday, if twice the number of comparable rats were killed as were actually killed, twice the isk would have been produced from the faucet.

In that way, ratting is precisely the same as mining. The difference is with ratting it is actually producing isk whereas in mining you're producing a commodity that has a variable isk value.

People rat in carriers. That's my justification for mining cap ship. Not a very strong justification but a justification none the less.

It appears I was either drunk or having a stupid moment when I wrote that. I can entirely see what you mean now.

This would have the unfortunate effect of making this profession either overpowered in the hands of niche players (because only they could afford rorquals) or underpowered overall due to how expensive rorquals are.

For the reasons behind this, see my posts in this thread.

Plus, why make the rorq a mining barge and not the Orca? Seems silly. And it seems there are better ways to get more industrialists into null